A Stopover in New Zealand

When James got the final word that he had been accepted at University of Queensland or "UQ" as the locals call it - I began the search for plane tickets for the overseas trip to Australia.  I would not want to account for how many hours I spent searching for tickets - the fluctuations in prices were dizzying!  One night (after a few weeks of looking)  I found tickets that seemed to be the best price and time frame.  I selected the flight and purchased it that night.  It wasn't until the next day when the website sent me the confirmation that I realized that I had clicked on the wrong flight - still the same destination, but the second stopover had a 9 hour break between flights in Auckland, New Zealand instead of a 3 hour stop!

Needless to say, I was a little annoyed with myself!!  After contacting the website and finding out that it would cost way too much to change the last flight (over $200. apiece), James and I realized that maybe we could make lemonade out of lemons and visit New Zealand for the day!!

I was concerned about getting through customs, but that was pretty easy (we just had to make sure we didn't bring any food or illegal drugs (haha) into the country and we were through!  We left our bags at a check-in counter at the airport and took a 30 min shuttle bus into downtown Auckland.

New Zealand was formed by many volcanoes thousand of years ago - so the area in Auckland is very hilly and green (New Zealand is where The Lord of the Rings was filmed)  We didn't have a huge amount of time, since we needed to allow for time to get back through security checks - but we ended up having about 5 hours to explore the downtown area and go up the sky tower!  Here are some pics from the downtown area and our views from the sky tower.

One of the Ports of Auckland

I'm not sure what this bus was for, but I thought it was interesting!

At the top of the SkyTower

View of the harbour from the Skytower

View of the city and the hills from the Skytower

One of the life size models of an Orc from Lord of the Rings - James thought he could take him!

James Picking out a hobbit cloak to add to his wardrobe

Me being attacked by a black rider

I guess I don't quite measure up to the height requirements to be a stand in for Avatar

This is hard to read - but this map shows where in New Zealand all of the set locations were for Lord of the Rings

Downtown Auckland

Skytower behind Jimbob's head! We went up in that! :)